Scandrick Should Feel Lucky

By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Cowboys cornerback Orlando Scandrick has been suspended for the first four games of the season after testing positive for a performance enhancing drug, or PED. He’s apologized to anyone and everyone as well he should. “I made a bad decision,” Scandrick said after the suspension was announced. “I’m responsible for what goes in my body. I know I’m responsible for what goes in my body. It’s a very humbling experience. I’m very sorry. I apologize to the Jones family. I’m very sorry to my teammates. I’m very sorry to the fans of Cowboys nation and I’m very sorry to my family.” You know what Orlando, you’re right, you are sorry. A sorry dumb ass.

What Scandrick tested positive for is amphetamines, which fall under the league’s PED policy. But what Scandrick allegedly took according to ESPN’s Ed Werder was a form of MDMA known as Molly. Scandrick admitted he took a recreational drug during a vacation in Mexico with his ex-girlfriend in April – which by the way on its own would not warrant a first offense suspension believe it or not – thank you CBA. The drug Scandrick took was most likely laced with amphetamines which triggered the positive test and subsequent suspension. He’s lucky that’s all it was laced with or this could be a completely different article I’m writing right now.

Scandrick is lucky a suspension is the only consequence he’ll face

This isn’t about how much he let his teammates down by getting suspended, which he most assuredly did, especially considering the sorry shape the Cowboys D is already in. No, this is about how someone with everything in life to lose rolled the dice in exchange for a few hours of being high.

Someone who buys or takes what they consider Molly these days is basically playing a game of Russian Roulette with their life. Today’s Molly is most often not just MDMA, which was originally developed as a medication to treat depression and is also the active ingredient in Ecstasy. In the last few years the drug has become a toxic mixture of lab-created chemicals, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Today’s Molly users are most likely consuming dangerous amounts of untested synthetic drugs. The DEA says only 13% of the Molly seized in New York state the last four years actually contained any MDMA. The drugs frequently found in Molly are things with such safe sounding names as Methylone, MDPV, 4-MEC, 4-MMC, Pentedrone and MePP. The lab-created chemicals mimic the effects of MDMA and most are central nervous system stimulants that can cause euphoric highs. But they can also cause a rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, blood vessel constriction and sweating, and can prevent the body from regulating its own temperature. Some of the chemicals have been reported to cause intense, prolonged panic attacks, psychosis and seizures….and more and more often these days deaths.

The formulas for synthetic drugs like Molly keep changing, and they’re manufactured with no regard as to how they safe they are for the users. Completely different ingredients have been found even in drugs that were sold in the same packaging. Al Santos, associate deputy administrator for the DEA said the amount of active ingredients can be dangerously different, because “the dosing for these sorts of drugs are in the micrograms and the room for error is tremendous – we’ve seen a lot of deaths with some of these compounds.” The DEA has even developed its own reference materials for state and local law enforcement because they were encountering so many different drug compounds they’d never seen before.

“It’s exactly the same phenomenon that occurred with ecstasy a decade ago,” said Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and an expert on MDMA. “Ecstasy had terrible reliability and it’s the same with Molly. Though it’s being marketed as pure MDMA, it’s a hoax and its deadly.”

So a 27-year-old professional athlete who makes $4.7 million a year thought everything mentioned above was a risk worth taking to get high one night. “Obviously on that moment in April, I was very disrespectful to this game,” Scandrick said when asked about the day he took the drug. “I was very disrespectful to this team, to this organization, to the National Football League. I have to face the consequences for what I ingested.”

I’m glad he’s sorry he let others down and embarrassed his team and league. But he’s missing the big picture. He’s lucky a suspension is the only consequence of his drug use that he’s facing. Others haven’t been so lucky when they took the same risk.

Tom Fireoved

Tom Fireoved is the Co-Founder of ScoreBoardTX and President of Franchise Sports & Entertainment, a Dallas based athlete marketing and consulting agency. He formerly served as Vice President of the Texas Rangers and Executive Vice President of the Dallas Stars.